Denny Hamlin, Alex Bowman leave Pocono with much-needed top fives

LONG POND, Pa. — Denny Hamlin finally got a result representative of his team’s speed. Alex Bowman, meanwhile, followed up his Chicago Street Race win with a second consecutive top five.

Neither were able to chase down Ryan Blaney for the victory Sunday at Pocono Raceway, but both saw the positives after much-needed runs for different reasons.

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Hamlin drove the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to a second-place finish in the Great American Getaway 400, marking his first top-10 finish — let alone top-five finish — since a runner-up result at World Wide Technology Raceway on June 2.

“We were in such a terrible slump,” Hamlin told NBC Sports. “We were terrible for a month and a half or so in our finishes, not in our performance. Feels good to have at least a solid day leaving here. I only care about winning, but still, this kind of rebound is something that at least makes you feel a little better.”

His strong finish at Pocono came with some coaching over the radio from crew chief Chris Gabehart, who tried to give Hamlin everything he needed to pass Bowman with seven laps to go and give the No. 11 car a chance to chase down Blaney.

“In that instance, I think both of us knew it’s gonna be a hard hill to climb to pass the 48 (Bowman) and the 12 (Blaney) in 20 laps at Pocono,” Gabehart told NASCAR.com. “But there were a couple little technical things that I saw that I was just trying to help him with that we’ve been working on at this track. But at some point, you just got to let him go to work and finally, that’s what we did.

“And I’m really proud of him passing the 48. People don’t realize late in the going up front at Pocono how hard it is to pass. So even passing just one of them was a good feat. We just couldn’t pass two of them.”

Hamlin was in control two weeks prior at Nashville Superspeedway, leading with two laps to go in regulation before five overtime attempts ultimately thwarted what appeared to be a sure win. In the five races between his top-10 drought, Hamlin finished 38th, 24th, 24th, 12th and 30th at Sonoma, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nashville and Chicago, respectively.

To right the ship at Pocono, where Hamlin leads all-time with seven victories, was significant, particularly ahead of the July 21 return of the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Sun., 2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, IMS Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).

“Yeah, it’s a big deal to your point,” Gabehart said. “We’ve had a lot of struggles — and everyone does. But with results, we should have quite a few more points in the bucket than we do at this point. So to take a big chunk out of the points lead, have a solid day heading into, in the 11 car’s opinion, probably the most important race of the year — the Brickyard at Indy is a big one for us now that it’s back on the oval. To try to get that last major for Denny, carrying a lot of momentum into that race is a big deal.”

Bowman was in need of a strong performance for a much different reason than Hamlin, however. The No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team has shown consistent speed all season with 12 top 10s in 21 races and a 13.3 average finish, good for fourth-best in the NASCAR Cup Series standings.

But following last week’s win at Chicago with another top-five finish — this time, a third-place effort at Pocono — helps build positive momentum for the group with five races remaining in the regular season.

“Definitely good to be stringing races like this together,” Bowman said. “We’re gonna have to do that in the playoffs, so if we can continue to do that throughout the regular season, I think that’s really good for us.”

MORE: Bowman: ‘Hard to be satisfied’ with third place

The strength Bowman’s shown on the results sheet the past two weeks appears to be no fluke either, with the No. 48 car displaying speed in Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions as well.

“I think we did a good job kind of across the board,” Bowman said. “We did a good job all weekend. Got a little behind in traffic on some of those restarts, but yeah, I think our team did a really good job. We had really good pitstops, good strategy and good calls.”

Ultimately, Bowman lost a spot on that final run to the checkered flag when Hamlin completed the pass at Lap 153 — but in Bowman’s opinion, that was the result of a making higher-percentage decision.

“I could have raced the hell out of Denny, for sure,” Bowman said. “And it probably would have brought everybody behind us back to us. And I got really loose. I watched a couple people smoke the fence off (Turn) 3 today and ruin their days and I’m like — I was really, really loose over there and kind of knew that there’s maybe a 20% chance I could have held him off if I made his life super difficult. Probably a 50% chance I would’ve crashed trying to do it, and third is better than crashed.

“So just tried to make a smart call there and obviously hate to lose positions, but, you know, he raced me super clean on the restart and just tried to give him that respect back.”